Fat Bunny

  • It Seems Longer…

    In a week from now it will be one year since I started working in earnest on the farm. Before that it was mostly just rearranging rusty deckchairs on a tree covered titanic. It meant that maybe a I was getting a day of work done, which was mostly making sure the weeds didn’t get too out of control, and some of junk was leaving occasionally. The first 18 months were pretty much grief, massive probate delays tying up everything, grief, massive feeling of being overwhelmed by the task, grief, and not even being sure I wanted to keep it. Throw in this health ‘hiccups’, some family troubles, and a cost of living crisis and it really did take almost two years to get to swinging a sledgehammer stage. In march last year the demolition of the cabin interior had not even started. I was still clearing the last of my father’s possessions at that point after basically not being able to be inside for more than 20mins before the PTSD would hit.

    12 months after the cabin renovation started I am not as far along as I would wish to be because it’s still easier to work outside. It’s amazing how distracting it can be to have acres of trees and plants to tidy up after decades of neglect. Somedays it just felt like I had a job mowing lawns all day instead of making cabin progress, especially over spring and summer.

    I am pinning my hopes on autumn allowing me to get the cabin bathroom and bedroom finished so I can move in. Autumn weather is more conducive to working inside and once all the leaves drop there isn’t much to do in the gardens for months.

    There is also the fact that I underestimated how long it would take to learn how to do building stuff, my previous renovation DIY projects were all mostly cosmetic and not structural. Replacing joists, reframing walls, leveling floors etc is all “proper” building stuff that requires knowing what you are doing, and for me that meant trial and error, getting advice from professionals, and watching many many YouTube tutorials for each new skill. Something that will be happening again multiple times as I tile bathrooms, lay wood floors, install a kitchen, etc.

    The design faze also taken a while, partly because I don’t have the budget to do things twice, so all the design decisions I make I will be living with till I die. Window in the wrong place? Tough. Door widths too narrow for future needs? Tough. And so on and so on for a 1000 other decisions that have seen the blank slate stage last a bit longer than expected.

    I don’t want to jinx it but I feel like there will be a moderate leap forward before winter comes.

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  • Interesting Times…

    Damn it’s easy to let things slip away, especially if you’re living in interesting times. Due to mix of personal and worldwide issues over the last few years I seem to have let doing stuff slide, or at least doing stuff I enjoyed slide. That whole divorce, raising kids with ‘requirements’, covid lockdowns, sudden death of my father, and a grab bag of health issues has really put the hand break on enjoying life vs just LIVING.

    No more aimless drives in the countryside because there is farm stuff to be done. No more weekends away because money needs to be spent wisely. No more time with friends because I no longer have a personality I only have a long list of stuff I need to do to talk about. No cafes, no bars, no dates, no life.

    When the dust settled after my father died I was almost sure I was going to sell the farm because I didn’t want fixing it to consume the rest of my life. But to sell it I at least needed to clear the decades of neglect and clutter and job that was far larger than I expected. I would like to say that during that clearing period I came to love and want to stay, but it is closer to the truth to say that the world went nuts, housing went crazy, and people turned on each other. So turning the farm into a peaceful retreat with trees and no bills suddenly became very attractive.

    So I have poured 1000s of hours and a couple of vertebrae into a blank and mostly structurally sound canvas. I have now lived with the place long enough to know where things need to be, and I have gained the skills required to put those things in those places. So even with foot dragging and my inability to ask for help I will be living in a half finished cabin by July, and a completely finished modernist box by Christmas.

    Then comes the tricky bit, going and living my life again and not spending my days hiding away in the woods till someone hasn’t heard from me for a few weeks and decides to check and finds me dead in a fashionable but now haunted midcentury chair.

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  • The Great Reset …

    Well, maybe great is overselling it, how about “The lets turn this period of turmoil into something positive with the energy and resources we have available at the moment”. Now that may not roll off the tongue, but it is a probably a great deal more accurate.

    The elder child is leaving the nest and it is 100% the right choice at this point. It will also be the first time he has not been living with me in 21 years. And although I have zero doubt I will be seeing him multiple times a week, there is definitely a big change in the feel of the house tonight.

    So I don’t go for a walk down any maudlin paths because of the partially empty nest I have chosen to make this week a deep clean week. A pantry that no longer needs to cater to the tastes of three is fair game for some serious purging. Same with bathroom products under the sink and in the vanity. And I am sure I will find plenty of other things scattered around the house that were mostly for the older child’s benefit, and the younger child and I wouldn’t miss.

    It makes sense to carry on the purging to include mine and the younger child’s stuff as well. In three months (four at the outside) I NEED to be living at the farm, in whatever shape that has to be. It would be nice if it was in a finished cabin with hot and cold running everything, but it will still happen if it’s a single finished room with half a bathroom and a toaster.

    Hopefully the elder can flourish and the younger and I can buckle down and do our own thriving.

  • What? Another one!

    I’m far less HUMBUG about New years than I am about Christmas. Don’t get me wrong I still won’t be going out or celebrating it in anyway, but I like the idea of a year having a full stop. I couldn’t tell you where 2024 ranks in my personal good or bad list because it’s such a low bar for a good year at the moment. If I am not dead and can still get out of bed in the morning I consider it a win. All I can say is I have definitely had worse years, and recently.

    I have zero intention of staying awake for midnight, in fact I will be deliberately avoiding it if the MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS warning on my new medication does it job, so I will get my resolutions out of the way now.

    • Make the cabin livable by April
    • Be packed and ready to go by March
    • Get elder child settled with his mother by February
    • Ask for help
    • Turn up to invitations
    • Get the damn stress back to a point that isn’t going to kill me

    All achievable goals, mostly because they don’t require any great effort from other people. I suspect the hardest one will be asking for help as I am awful at it, and I also find it hard to accept offers of help, and I will never be able to bring up the offer again for if it slips someone’s mind. I know people are busy with their own lives so I am reluctant to remind anyone for fear of making them feel obligated.

    So all my goals are based on what I can do myself, or afford to pay for. The second category is rapidly dwindling as running two of everything is draining my accounts rapidly, and I don’t have time to bring in enough money to cover the shortfall each month. So that is definitely adding to the stress, which affects my health, which makes it harder to get work done, and so on in ever decreasing spirals. The irony that if I was living at the farm my health would almost certainly improve quickly, my finances would be better, and I would be looking out my window to see wildlife and trees instead of cars and my neighbour wielding a leaf blower.

    So I am not promising to wake tomorrow and greet 2025 with a sunny disposition, but I will treat it as a new page in a story that has been a bit grim for the last few chapters. If I can make the heroes journey a bit less perilous for a while maybe the reader will have the desire to finish the book.

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  • Defenestration…

    In an attempt to make progress at the cabin I have decided to throw something out the window. What I mainly ended up throwing out the window was shards of glass from the window I naively thought I could remove without damaging. It turns out I don’t really have the skills or patience for that kind of thing.

    One the bright side I didn’t injure myself which was totally good management and not dumb luck. My wear gloves for all jobs no matter how small really paid off today, as did my need to wear glasses to see what I am doing. I won’t lie, wearing reading glasses to read the measurements on a drop saw has probably saved my eyesight more than once. I ended up cutting the window frame out as it would have required a ladder to remove it in one piece from the outside, and I am way more afraid of falling off a ladder out here by myself than I am of nail guns and grinders.

    I’m still deciding on the exact size of the fixed glass window that is going in here but I suspect it will be pretty close to what is pictured above. With the current plan I will be pretty much doubling the surface area of windows in the house while still managing to gain useable wall space.

    I’m hoping for a bit of cool weather next week so I make a start on the next window (on the left of the picture). Also on the list is removing the back door and bathroom window, but I am suffering from a bit of indecision about the bathroom layout. I may need to take some pieces of cardboard out and make a mock up toilet and vanity.

  • Spoon Theory II

    The measuring your ability to do things by how many spoons it will cost you is now a common idiom, but I think it needs an update to include the exchange rate for spoons spent on loved one’s and friends vs. spoons spent on bureaucracy. The same task for a friend vs for a job will cost me a different amount. Helping a friend fill out forms = 1 spoon, filling out forms for myself = 2 spoons. However I suspect there are people that experience the exact opposite of that. It would be nice sometimes I could be in the double spoons for myself group, I could get so much more done. Maybe I need some kind of placebo spoon tasks that I can be told are for someone else but they are really for me?

    Apropos of nothing I have started a new medication that makes me slightly foggy of mind in the evening, the same time that I usually write these blogs. Which is why I suspect I will wake up in the morning and reread this to see if it makes any sense at all.

    *I have ten bucks on no.

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  • Here Comes Another One…

    It’s good news week
    Someone’s dropped a bomb somewhere
    Contaminating atmosphere
    And blackening the sky

    And it’s not great for my mental health. 2025 has moved from being just around the corner to at the damn door, and an old mans thoughts turn to what to do with the ever dwindling years he has left. I am not delusional enough to believe I can change anything within, but maybe I can change something external to give me a better chance of making through the next 12 months. I think the best thing I can do for my health is to avoid news. I don’t mean just not actively seeking out day to day news, but vigorously avoiding all the sources of news that I can. I get that pretending awful stuff isn’t happening won’t make me a good citizen, but constantly be depressed and anxious doesn’t make me particularly useful to society either.

    So next year instead of engaging in political discourse I am going to block every word I can think of that might lead me down the wrong path. I suspect at least the next 4 years (at least) is going to be an absolute dogs breakfast, and there is absolutely nothing I can do to change it. I am skeptical of the effectiveness of shouting on the internet, and I am not wired to erase a CEO. I have very limited time and resources available to me, so I have to prioritize my very small circle. I can on a good day help my friends, be kind to the odd stranger, and make a safe haven for my family.

    No news, no politics, no drama is probably impossible without completely disconnecting from the world, and I have already gone a little too far down that path in the last few years. It got very easy to feel comfortable at home during covid, and then again when I was sick. Hopefully I can find a bit more balance in 2025 and try to let people in, ask for help, and help others in return, but I am not going to be able to do that if I am in a constant state of depression about the state of things. I am glad there are people out there dedicated to societal on a grand scale, I’m going to need to step away and occasionally feed a duck or adopt a cat.

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  • The Thin Black and White Duke…

    About 6 weeks ago a cat followed my eldest home from Taco Bell. A strange choice for a cat to make as my eldest is nervous around animals and taco bell is not a great option for cats, or for people to be honest. For the next few days the cat stuck around the backyard, blagging meals from me, and probably the neighbours.

    This is a very calm cat and obviously a pet as they had a collar with a bell but no number to call. I spent a few days checking local lost pet pages on Facebook etc but nothing was posted about this lost cat. As I was in the middle of trying to finish the farm, a few health tests etc and I was being Mr Sensible about things I decided I should contact the local council pet rescue to try and reunite the poor cat with it’s family. I keep saying it because at this point I was sure it was female, and pretty sure not desexed. That also played heavily into my wanting the cat to be in the hands of people that could get the vet to check everything out. I was sad to see the cat go, but I was pretty sure there must be a family missing them.

    Over the next week I put it out of my mind until I saw that the next Saturday the animal shelter was having an adoption day, this seemed like a great opportunity to go check if the cat had been collected by its owners or was still there. In my head I decided to let the universe take the lead in this one and if the cat was there on Saturday I would look into the possibility of adopting it.

    The morning came, I was first one there, I enquired after the cat, but was informed her family had collected them a few days ago. I was disappointed but was sure it was for the best, the cat was home and my life was already pretty busy. The universe had obviously decided it wasn’t to be.

    Then 3 weeks ago I saw a post in a local group.

    It seems SHE has runaway again. I contacted the person to fill them in on what I knew, the lady in the meantime I had discovered the cat belonged to her new neighbours. Who didn’t seem to be the most responsible pet owners, with several cats and dogs being allowed to roam at will. Also apparently it was a house with a lot of shouting and screaming, so it seems the poor cat was just trying to get some peace. The woman waited several days for the owners to come and collect the cat and she had texted them several times. Eventually she to got in contact with the council and them collect the cat. She also let them know that I was interested in adopting the cat if the owners relinquished her.

    Three weeks of the occasional call, and daily checking the council website for any updates, but only being told that the owners legally had till the 28th to collect the cat. So I once again decided that the universe was in charge of this and I should probably be concentrating on the hospital day surgery I had booked in for Tuesday. The surgery went well and found nothing unexpected so I was a bit sore but recovering well the next day when the council called a few days early to let me know the cat was mine if I wanted. I told them I would be there as soon as possible.

    A quick stop for painkillers and pet supplies and I was soon at the animal shelter with the second born child. I had kept all these goings on to myself just in case it didn’t work out, because then I would have a disappointed child and no cat. Upon arrival we were shown to the “get to know the cat room” and the cat was brought in to meet us (again). There was no doubt she was coming home with us, the only thing was she was a he. I chatted with the shelter manager who was very happy that we were taking the cat, she told us the owners had blocked their number and that they had also surrendered two dogs earlier that week.

    As I was filling out the adoption paperwork I needed to fill in a name for our new family member, and I didn’t have a suitable one ready. Since our she cat had turned out to be a tom cat the name Ziggy popped into my head, you know Major Tom/Space Oddity/Bowie/Ziggy Stardust. And that’s how we came to adopt a cat called Ziggy.

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  • I Want My Life Back

    It wasn’t a great one but at least I occasionally got to do something other than work. Two years of grief, clearing junk, and other life stuff that started pretty much the same time the pandemic shutdowns ended has been a bit of chore. Maybe a chore isn’t understating it a bit, it’s broken my soul. It’s ruined my health. It’s damaged my relationships. Soooo not great.

    Somedays the only thing keeping my head out of oven is a sliver of hope that within a few months I can be standing in a renovated cabin, debt free, drinking coffee and listening to gothic cabaret while I bake biscuits and stare at the trees. I won’t the younger child working on their art in the tiny house, being themselves and popping up for coffee as often as they can tolerate me singing the wrong words and making dreadful puns.

    I want elder child settled in with his mother and immersed in his chosen tech career. Maybe looking up from screen occasionally and deciding to visit me.

    I want all the money, work, life stress back under control. I want the time to have a meal that hasn’t been reheated in the microwave. I want the constant stress to stop ravaging my body and causing constant pain from the inflammation. I want to take a drive that doesn’t involve going to a hardware store or doctor.

    Is that too much to ask?

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  • I’m an idiot…

    Proper anxiety attacks are a funny old thing. Well I mean terrifying and confusing, but also funny in that kind of way where you realize that you are an idiot. I had a full on proper sweaty, pulse racing, chest clutching panic attack today. I literally thought I was dying and yet did nothing to seek help. I was checking my temperature and using the ECG on my watch because I was convinced I had some kind of flu that was about to stop my heart. Not for a second did I think something helpful like “hey maybe this is a panic attack”, it was all “I’m going to drop dead with a dirty kitchen”.

    A few hours later and I am not dead, my heart rate is normal etc. The only lingering after effect is that I just spent $200 on a fancy blood pressure monitor with overnight shopping. Which I managed to order from Amazon during the attack.